christopher price

November remains a proving ground for Patriots

Around Thanksgiving in the NFL, there’s a sudden sense of urgency that permeates the action on a weekly basis, an energy that wasn’t there through the first two months of the season. The games get bigger, the stakes get higher and the game of separation begins in earnest.

The bottom line is that playing well in November usually leads to good things down the road: the last five Super Bowl champions posted a combined record of 47-16 after Nov. 1 during the season in which they won the Super Bowl, a winning percentage of .746.

Since 2001, the Patriots have compiled an NFL-best 76-23 (.768) record after Nov. 1, a record that includes the postseason. When they have enjoyed success late in the regular season and into the playoffs, the seeds for greatness have been planted in November: In their three Super Bowl years (2001, 2003 and 2004), New England was a combined 33-2 after Nov. 1, with only one of those losses in three seasons coming after Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, the month of November can expose frauds and reveal weaknesses in teams that were initially believed to be contenders. Take the case of the 2009 Patriots: With a 5-2 record, they appeared ready to make a move once November hit. But that all went up in smoke in November and December, as New England went 5-5 down the stretch, including a first-round playoff flameout at the hands of the Ravens. It was the worst post-November record of any team in the Bill Belichick era.

This year’s New England team certainly appears to have started cresting — they have won six of the last seven games and stand at 7-2, tied with the Jets at the top of the AFC East. With the exception of what linebacker Jerod Mayo has called the “hiccup” of a loss to the Browns in Cleveland on Nov. 7, they certainly appear to be on the upswing as the most important stretch of the regular season gets underway. Though the Patriots have lost 10 players to injured reserve this season, they are healthier than most teams. They also have a red-hot quarterback who is coming off one of the finest performances of his career. In addition, four of their seven games are at home, a place where they are unbeaten so far this season.

This Sunday, the Patriots will face a team that knows the importance of playing well at the right time. Since 2001, the Colts have the third-best record in the league in games played after Nov. 1 with a 67-33 (.670) mark. (Pittsburgh is second-best through that stretch with a 66-31-1 record and a .679 winning percentage.)

“Coach Belichick always says that football season doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving, and that’s when the good teams really start to show themselves,” said quarterback Tom Brady, who holds a 51-13 record as a starter in games played after Thanksgiving.

“Both the two teams this weekend, the Patriots and the Colts, we’re in good position, but really this is where we’ve got to start really improving as a team and build on the foundation that we set early in the season.”

That foundation was certainly shaky in the early stages of the regular season, especially on the defensive side of the ball, where the Patriots yielded an average of 24 points per game through their first four contests. Through that stretch, they lost to the Jets and barely beat a woeful Bengals team.

But after six weeks of preseason and 10 weeks of the regular season, linebacker Jerod Mayo believes this team has put itself into position to start playing its best football from here on out.

“I think so. There are a lot of teams that would want our record right now,” Mayo said. “At the same time, we’re not satisfied. If we start to play our best football now, we’ll be hard to stop.”

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